Page 113 of The Duke's Forbidden Bride
Spencer surged to his feet.
“Kill me, too,” he had once begged.“Kill me, for I refuse to live in a world without Anna.”
He saw his father run, and he moved, picturing his father’s face. His fist rose, his arm weakened from one too many blows. His vision blurred, but he still landed a hard blow, knowing where to hit to fell his opponent instantly.
He didn’t stop punching until he was gasping for breath, kneeling over the injured man, his knuckles as bloodied as his father’s.
Hands moved him, voices announced his victory, but there was nothing victorious about any of it. What had his father found at the end of his violent tether? For it was not something Spencer could understand.
He didn’t remember climbing out of the boxing ring, but suddenly a glass was slammed down before him, and Theodore’s face appeared in his field of vision.
“I am taking you to my townhouse,” he barked. “Down that in one go, and if you collapse onthe walk over, I will not drag your sorry backside home. I will simply throw rainwater at you.”
Mercifully, Spencer didn’t collapse, but he did stagger, and he stayed silent, words and pained noises kept behind clenched teeth as Theodore cleaned him up.
His friend said nothing, not for a long time, but his eyes said enough.
Finally, when Spencer was in a fresh shirt and wrangled into the study, Theodore spoke.
“Would you care to explain yourself?”
“No,” Spencer muttered, staring out the window.
“Tough. What I saw in there was not you. Whereareyou right now, Spencer? Where is your mind?”
“I do not know. It is broken apart and scattered. And what if that was me? The me that has been lurking beneath the surface all along?”
Theodore scoffed, not holding back his words. “I have known you for many years, and Iknowyou, Spencer. I think I know what this is about.”
Spencer winced because, of course, his friend knew.
Theodore eyed him long enough to draw his attention. “You are afraid of becoming your father.”
Spencer flinched and took a second before nodding. “I tried to find what he felt when he used to beat us. I cannot find it.”
“That is how you know you are not him,” Theodore said. “And Spencer, your father never bled for anybody. You have bled too much for others. Now, it is time to stop bleeding and find the very thing that makes you heal. I think you have already found it, but for some reason, you are not with her.”
Spencer thought of Eleanor, with dirt up to her elbows, kneeling in her garden. Of her baking and the mess she had made in the kitchen. Of her insistence on doing what she wished to do. Of her moans, of her touches, of her kisses and the way she had first danced with him, like she had forgotten how to.
He thought of her finding her way back to music, and he wondered if he could find his way back to forgiveness after endangering her, so he may find his ultimate way back to her.
“You are not him, Spencer,” Theodore insisted.
Spencer held his stare but said nothing else.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“He is a fool, that brother of mine,” Charlotte snapped as Eleanor climbed out of their carriage the day after the fight.
Spencer had been gone all day and had left no note or message to hint at where he had gone.
“He disappeared often when he first returned to London, but other than that…” Charlotte made an annoyed noise but stopped when she peered at the house before them. “This is your Mr. Gray’s house?”
“Oi, he isnotmy Mr. Gray,” Eleanor insisted.
“What a shame. I thought we got along so well last time.”
The two of them looked up at the voice coming from the open doorway.
